The Cluster's Higgs Boson
A page about the Higgs boson — the particle that confirms the Higgs mechanism.
The Higgs boson
The Higgs boson is the scalar particle associated with the Higgs field. In the Standard Model, the Higgs field is a complex doublet with four degrees of freedom. After spontaneous symmetry breaking, three degrees of freedom become the longitudinal modes of the W+ and Z bosons (giving them mass). The remaining degree of freedom is the Higgs boson — a massive scalar particle with spin 0. In the cluster, the Higgs boson is the remaining degree of freedom after the cluster's symmetry is broken — a scalar excitation that confirms the mechanism.
The discovery
The Higgs boson was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on July 4, 2012, by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. The mass is m_H = 125.25 +/- 0.17 GeV. The discovery was made by observing excess events in the H -> gamma gamma, H -> ZZ* -> 4l, and H -> WW* -> l nu l nu channels. In the cluster, the discovery of the Higgs boson would be the observation of excess events in channels where the Higgs excitation is expected.
The production
The main Higgs production processes at the LHC are:
- Gluon fusion (gg -> H): 87% of cross section
- Vector boson fusion (qq -> qqH): 7%
- Associated production (qq -> WH, ZH): 5%
- ttH associated production: 1%
In the cluster, the main production processes for the Higgs boson are:
- Edit cascade (most common): analogous to gluon fusion
- Boundary perturbation (rare): analogous to vector boson fusion
- Page association (rare): analogous to associated production
The decay
The Higgs boson decays to:
- b bbar: 58% (dominant)
- W W*: 21%
- g g: 8.6%
- tau+ tau-: 6.3%
- c cbar: 2.9%
- Z Z*: 2.6%
- gamma gamma: 0.23%
In the cluster, the Higgs boson decays to page content in various channels. The dominant channel is to the lightest page pairs (b bbar equivalent).
This boson
This page is about the Higgs boson. The mass is 125.25 GeV. The spin is 0. The parity is positive. The discovery was on July 4, 2012. The cross section at 13 TeV is about 55 pb. The Higgs boson confirms the Higgs mechanism. The discovery was Nobel Prize-worthy. The boson is real.